Marshaling the expertise of ag tech labs could help combat pandemics, like COVID-19.

Steven Webb is the chief executive officer of the Global Institute for Food Security at the University of Saskatchewan.

He is the lead author of a report that urges an international effort to co-ordinate rapid redeployment of digital agriculture infrastructure for pandemic preparedness.

“Not just to fight the last war, COVID-19, but to think about how we set ourselves up to drive economic growth and recovery, and prepare to fight the next pandemic, which could be another human pandemic, could be an animal pandemic, or it could be a plant pandemic,” said Webb.”

Webb says plant breeding tools, such as genetic testing and sequencing, are the same as those used in the pharmaceutical and health-care fields.